Level Design - Thracian Training Facility - Decals

In my level I decided to create decals of sand on my training areba floor, decal is a projection of a texture. I made two different types of sand to make it more realistic, I made sand because the training arena is based on the classic greek arenas with the coloumns so eventhough its a sci-fi version I wanted to implement this into my arena.

Thank you for reading my blog. this concludes my first year at university, I have learnt alot of skills and I am really looking forward to starting next year, I have a few indie game projects im working on over the summer so i will be posting these soon.

Thank you

Character design - future Greek soldier - Character sheet

The final stage of my character design is to make a character sheet showing off the character and some basic details of the character like name,age,height,weight etc

I decided to keep the armour black with camouflage clothing underneath, I put all my designs together and painted my final character. I made 2 different character sheets, one showing the blueprints and one with the character inside my level I created.

 These are two progress pictures of my first character sheet using photoshop. I used a stock image to get the pose of the character and I used my sketch of my weapon design to draw over and make it look 3D

I painted bullet holes to the armour for added effect, i was very proud of these. 

Below is my first final character sheet, As you can see I implemented the blueprints and gave it a nice space background then I put the character details over the top.

As my character and level are related i thought it would be nice to implement them together as you can see below. 

This concludes my character this year, next year I will be modelling a character and using mudbox to create a creatures head. Im really looking forward to it.

Level Design - Thracian Training Facility - textures

I thought i would show you a few of my textures and how they were constructed in UDK
Below is my roof texture I made.. On the right hand side you can see how the texture is made on UDK, starting from the top the first one is the diffuse texture sample (Targafile) I made in photoshop Cs5, then next one down are the EMISSIVE texture sample. this is what makes the lights glow, you only show where the lights will go and the rest is black.. the texture sample goes into a multiplier with a constant with control how bright you want the lights. the night one is the SPECULAR texture sample, this has a multiplier and contant too. it controls the shine of the texture. Finally i made the NORMAL texture, this gives the texture a 3D effect, makes it have bumps and gives the texture a more realistic look. the image is still 2D but the NORMAL map works like magic.

 This material is alot more complex, for the material to have to holographic effect the texture sample has to go into the the opacity ( see-through) and the emissive to give it the bright glowing effect.. this material moves, the figure in the material cycles left and the righting on the material cycles down. to do this I attached a panner to the texture sample and you can choose for the texture to move on the X or Y axis. I also created a flashing/blinking effect which helps with the holographic effect, adds realism.

Thank you for reading my blog

Level Design - Thracian Training Facility - Main door

Working on my last asset on my level before adding the finishing touches on my level. Ive been thinking on how to make my main door. originally it was going to be a corridor so I left it as a gap but then i came up with the idea to make it into a grand door. I wanted it to stand out so I kept it basic, with Spartan and Thracian shields. I made the door have old Greek mythology and old Greek engravings. this is how it came out.

I'm really happy with how it came out.. I got this effect by getting the diffuse and specular map plain but made the normal map with the mythology pictures. Below is the normal map I used.

This was my last asset. My level is now complete .. all that is left to do is double check lighting and add sounds. 

Level Design - Thracian Training Facility - Training Arena

This is the lower floor of my level. You take the elevator down and the doors open into the arena.

The Generator generates the plasma energy for the holographic shields.

Shields, plasma energy and bullet proof.

Training Arena and middle lifting platform for the IA bots.

holographic pictures of greek gods and heroes.

Entrance and exit for the Training Arena

nearly finished my whole level. a few little assets left and the main door to texture. then im on to adding the sounds. 

Thank you for reading and sipporting my blog.

Level Design - Thracian Training Facility - security corridor/ office

Security corridor progress and assets
progress.

the security corridor through the window.

Computer desk with three computers and holo-keyboards.

Security Corridor Entrance

 Security sign with lights.

Inside the corridor and the holo-window with security body check. 

more to come :D

Character design - future Greek soldier - Blueprints

one of the stages of character design are the blueprints. the blueprints give a better look at the character from different views. front, back and side. the blueprints are then used to model the character in 3D. so the blueprints don't have to be perfect but they have to be clear on what goes where and clear details for the modeller.

these are my character blueprint.

Front: notice that the clothing is to the side so that the blueprints show the full armour.

Rear:

side: 

the arm is to the side for the same reason as the clothing. So you can see the the full side armour.

all three blueprints together:

notice how all three blueprints are at the same level head to toe. 

Blueprints shaded. gives the blueprints more depth and makes it easier to model from. 

colour scheme 

I couldn't decide on what colours to have my character so I made a mini colour scheme. this was just to see what colour suited the armour type and the clothing, as you can see I used camouflage for the armour which looked really cool. 

Character design - future Greek soldier - The Thracians

This project was to design a fantasy/ fairy tale characters and remake a sci if version of the chosen character. I ofcourse choose to stay on my Greek theme and Thracian soldier. I had an idea in my head so I did a bit of research. Looking at spartan and other Greek warriors. I started to rough out silhouette thumbnails to get a general idea of what I want my character appearance to be like. It is important to get a unique character silhouette so it stands out and people can recognize your character.

Silouettes

Armour Thumbnails

Rear armour

Arm Designs 

Final Armour Design - Digital
Front Torso,

Final Helmet Design

 Rear Torso

 Side Torso

 Front Torso

I used photoshop cs5 to draw these digitally. I used grayscale tones to shade in the armour and give it the light and dark effect. I then found textures i wanted my armour to be and used 'overlay' on the layers for the textures to overlay for the shaded effect. 

Character Design - Mini Project

As part of our character design development we have to do a mini project which is to create a box character made out of paper using our characters we have designed. We have to paint our characters but in basic form using our Photoshop skills, unfortunately for me I have none, so this proved very difficult for me but a huge learning curve in my digital painting.
We were given a net template to put our designs onto so then later we can cut them out and assemble the characters to make them into a 3D cube.
This is the first little step on the process of designing a game character.

It wasn't completely finished but due to tight deadlines this had to do. but I am very happy with it. as you can see there are loads of detail. I didn't want to hold back and change the design of my character so i went all out to make this. It took me alot longer than I originally thought it would purely because of my lack of photoshop skills but like i said, i have learnt so much about Photoshop because of this mini project. So practice does make perfect :D

Below is my cube thracian cut out and built together :D .. and a selfie of me with him!.